Field
This technology relates generally to the manufacture of pork sausage and, more particularly, to manufacture of pre-rigor sausage.
Background Art
Historically it is common to cut and remove meat from an animal carcass soon after slaughter. This system of processing is still practiced particularly where refrigeration resources are at a premium. However, even in the United States some animal carcasses are cut soon after slaughter. In countries like the United States where energy has been plentiful, refrigeration became so abundant that the meat industry adopted facilities that were extensively equipped with abundant refrigeration resources which were not necessarily economical or best for the meat product being cooled. A combination of these facilities having plentiful refrigeration and the practice of chilling, reheating, and re-chilling tons of product each day, created the need for an efficient processing systems became evident. There should be processing efficiency along with production efficiency to provide the consumer with the best quality at the lowest price. Hot processing helps to achieve this goal.
The pork sausage industry utilizes a short processing period from slaughter to the chilled or frozen package. The system makes raw seasoned sausage in less than 90 minutes after slaughter. This process not only takes advantage of economics in processing and chilling, but provides the consumer with a sanitary, longer shelf-life product. The majority of the raw pork sausage industry now uses pre-rigor pork. The raw pork sausage industry uses sows (a female swine that has farrowed one or more litters of pigs) with the proper ratio of fat to lean. This careful selection of the animal makes it possible to blend a product without a great amount of excess fat. Lean meat and fat are separated from the bone, chopped into uniform pieces, partially cooled, seasoned, ground, and stuffed into grease-proof casings in a matter of minutes. The chubs are then cooled using an ethylene glycol bath system or other cooling system. Pork sausage links can be extruded with or without casing. The links can then be refrigerated. The case hardened links are then packaged and tempered. Pork tissue (lean and fat) to be used for further manufacture is generally salted (2-4 percent) during the coarse chopping step and then placed in boxes or other containers to be frozen. The pre-salted meat is used in sausage manufacture because of its ability to yield actin and myosin for binding. Even though pre-rigor pork has been shown to have numerous advantages, the industry has been reluctant to process animal cuts directly from the slaughter floor without some cooling.
The pork industry has been reluctant to adopt hot processing for primal cuts for butcher hogs; barrow (a male pig that has been castrated) or gilt (female pig less than six months old that has never been pregnant), but have utilized hot boning for the manufacture of sausage using sows where the meat from entire animal carcass is utilized for the sausage. However, it would not be economically practical to use the same process for butcher hogs for processing sausage where the meat from the entire carcass is utilized because the primal cuts for the butcher hog carries a higher value than it would if it were ground into sausage. Although, hot processing of meat offers several economical advantages which result from reduction of weight loss during chilling (about 1.5%), reduction of drip loss during storage of vacuum-packaged cuts by 0.1-0.6%, reduction in cooler space by 50-55%, savings of refrigeration energy by 40-50%, quicker turnover of meat at plant, reducing capital cost for buildings, higher final yield of products manufactured from hot-boned meat, savings on labor by 20% and savings on transport costs.
Hot-boned meat offers numerous advantages in the production of comminuted meat products, attributed to higher muscle pH, higher protein solubility and increased emulsifying capacity. Due to higher pH and Residual ATP level, and better solubility of myofibrillar proteins, functional properties of hot-boned meat are superior to those of cold-boned meat. Hot-processing resulted in higher fat retention during cooking than does cold-processing of ground pork and the patties made from hot-boned pork had higher cooking yield and more desirable pink/red color which might be associated with its higher ultimate pH. Studies have shown that, not only hot-boned meat but also hot-boned fat could increase the final yield. Therefore, it is well understood that the superior functional properties of hot-boned meat are mostly due to its higher pH and protein solubility. However, hot-boning butchered hogs for the manufacture of sausage rather than using the older sows is not economically practical because the primal cuts of a butchered hog has a greater return in value than would be gained by grinding the primal cuts of a butchered hog into ground sausage. One objective of the present invention as disclosed and claimed herein is to capture the benefits of hot-boning at least a portion of a butchered hog and capture the greater return in value for the primal cut, while also retrieving a ground sausage product from the butchered hog without effecting the return on value for the primal cuts.